There is a poem by Rowan Williams, much used in Advent Services and quoted in Advent reflections. You can read the poem here:
The poem is so evocative of the Advent season - with its sense of waiting, expectation for the coming of Christ as a child. It is also strongly evocative of the season, as late autumn passes into mid winter and the sun sinks to its lowest point in the sky, the days are short and (normally) cold. The earth seems somehow alien, and yet still beautiful in its shrunken, misty, deadened form.
“The star-snowed fields of sky” gives us a hint of light, in fact of a very great light bursting from hosts of angels announcing the birth of Christ. But in the poem it is only a hint, and hints are, in a way, one of the themes of Advent. Light overcomes darkness, good overcomes evil, life overcomes death. In the world we live in, we often can’t see this very clearly; we often have to walk by faith, trusting that God will bring all these things out of the darkness and muddle in which find ourselves. A small candle flame, flickering in darkness is one of the great liturgical symbols of Advent. It reminds us of a deep truth, experienced by many, that goodness cannot be overcome by evil. But sometimes we live this by glimmers of knowledge, more by faith than by immediate experience.
When we wait for a child to be born, part of the excitement is finding out who this child will “be”. The unborn person is a great unknown. I too wonder just how much we know who we are waiting for in Advent. We have hints, lots of them, in the reading of the prophets at this time of year. Their main theme is “live justly, love mercy and walk humbly before your God”. Micah 6:8. These prophesies tell us that actually meeting Jesus will change us in ways we couldn’t have imagined. Advent is a time of preparation for this meeting, a time of preparation for Christ to born in us. At times this preparation is hard, “like crying in the night, like blood, like breaking,…writhing to toss him free”. But his coming is humble, gentle and warm: “like child”.
Mother Sarah
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